


Ex Libris

by kalliel



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Timeline, BAMF Sam Winchester, Brother Feels, Demon Cure, Demon Dean, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Epistolary, Experimental Style, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Mixed Media, Post-Demon Dean, Screenplay/Script Format, canon-noncompliant past 10x02, garlic shaped stationery, how to cure a demon, image intensive, lots of redacted text, motel stationery, redacted text, redacted thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-19
Updated: 2014-10-19
Packaged: 2018-04-08 02:20:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4287006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kalliel/pseuds/kalliel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Well, the rumors are true: Sam Winchester doesn't fuck around.</p><p>(Let's cure a demon.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ex Libris

  


  


* * *

**Original Text:**

Well, the rumors are true:  Sam Winchester doesn't fuck around.

"How do you feel?" Sam asks.

Dean looks at the crook of his elbow, mottled purple and riddled with puncture wounds.  "Like a drug addict."

"Uh _huh_ \--"  Sam's voice lilts up at the end, though Dean's not sure if Sam's angry or just distracted.  His hands swim back into view with a clean needle.  "Hey," he says, and pushes Dean's chest back upright with his palm.  Dean feels a reflexive pain there, and then he doesn't.

Sam clenches his fist a few times before drawing blood from his arm, which is in an equal state of _Requiem for a Dream_.  "How do you feel?" he repeats.  "Do you need more?"

But Dean's started to list forward again.

"Dean."

"Do we have to do this here?" Dean asks, even as he reaches for the syringe in Sam's hand.

Sam draws it back, carefully out of reach.  "Yeah, Dean. We're doing this here.  Right here, right now, no halftime.  Just lie back."

Lying down would be admitting defeat.

Dean wipes the rank sweat from his face and lies back.

He tries to breathe like a normal fucker.  But it's hard to forget that you didn't just drown in your own blood countable hours ago while also pretending that's not how you feel now.  Except it's Sam's blood.  Except you're a demon, and it's Sam's blood.

 

I like your bed.  
Sams memory foam handprint.  
Sam saving Dean from Hell, the way he's been trying to for years

 

Pick your poison.  
Holy water.  
No.  
Seriously?  
Didn't work on Yellow-Eyes, Sam points out.  And I need to be sure.  
Seriously? Dean repeats. Not only is he a demon, Sam thinks he's the king of Hell.  
Pick your poison, Sam repeats.  
Dean shrugs.  Fuck, all of it, then.

 

"Human Crowley cried."  
"Sorry to disappoint."  
"Wept, actually."  
"Yeah, well.  Human me is done and tired."

 

I'm not gonna lose you twice in one day. / Sam shakes his head.  That'd be a new low, even for us.  
You already have.

 

"Dean, about what you said," says Sam.  

Dean's staring at the ceiling.  He'd never had occasion to notice before, but there's a devil's trap up there; painted off white against white.  Interspecies shagging must have been strictly off limits at Men of Letters summer camp.  But maybe it's his imagination, maybe there's nothing, maybe it's just a ghost, flash-seared into his field of vision.  

_You're trapped, you're trapped, you're trapped.  And it's your tools and your training and your you that got you here._

Dean doesn't know what he said, or when he said it.  He's said a lot of things.  "Mmm?" he responds, and adds to the collection.

"Hey, stay with me."  Dean's body slides into the depression Sam makes when he sits down, and Sam slaps his shoulder twice.  "Give me your arm."

Dean turns his palm upward.

"No, the other one."

Oh.  

Right.  

He can feel it burning now, with that renewed awareness.  His throat feels thick and clotted.  "Just give me the damn needle."

For a moment, the intensity drops from Sam, and he says, "Sorry, buddy.  You've lost your sharp object privileges."  

 

XXXXX

"You said, just before, you know. With Metatron.  You said--"

He doesn't know what he said.  His mind's racing, but he comes up blank.  Sue him; at the time, he'd kinda been preoccupied with something else.  But whatever he was, he has to make this right.  He feels, in his heart, that he has to make it right.  And he has that chance now.

"Yeah, about that," Dean says.  "I lied."


End file.
